There is a strong tendency for us to take for
granted what we have learned
and presume to know: the
shape and size of the Earth,
for example, or that it is a
wandering star (planet) which
spins on its axis as it
revolves around the Sun. But imagine that your
memory has been wiped clean
and all you have is your 5
senses and an inquisitive, intelligent
mind, like a young child or
someone living in the distant
past . . . . The history of science
tells the story of how mankind
(not just, but mainly
Europeans) first came to
know what we know.

How could you or I
even begin to work out for
ourselves these and all other things
we have learned and take for
granted? Where
would we start? What
questions would we ask? What
ideas and speculations might
we come up with, with what
arguments for their validity?

What we know today -
or could know if we had the
time (and ability) to learn it all - is the
culmination of 3 millennia of
painstaking observations,
recordings, attempted
explanations, forgetting,
rediscovering, and attempts at
better and still better explanations.
During the past 400 years our
knowledge and understanding
have increased at an exponential
rate. It is very difficult to
comprehend just how much
things have changed - and
continue to change.

We are extremely
fortunate to be the heirs of
such a vast wealth of
knowledge. It is amazing that
we know so much - and at a
deeper level, even more amazing
that we know anything at all.

If you have
ever tried explaining
Pythagoras's theorem, for
example, to your dog, you will know what I mean. You can spend
ages trying to get across to him some simple
facts - even ones relating to
dogs - and he will just look
at you in a
way that plainly says he hasn't a clue what you're on about. And as far as I have been able to
ascertain, it is much the same with all animals - even with elephants and
dolphins, which are
thought to be among the most intelligent.

When did humans first
start to wonder at and about
the world around them, rather
than just using their senses
instinctively,
as animals do, for survival?

The story of
Adam and Eve perhaps provides
at least a
symbolic answer. After disobeying
God and eating fruit from the
tree of knowledge, "the eyes of
both of them were opened and
they discovered that they were
naked".

Why Adam and
Eve's awareness of
being naked should cause them to
feel ashamed is an interesting
question. I suspect it had to
do with them also becoming aware of
the
responsibility they now bore for the
consequences of their sexual
inclinations and behaviour

After getting
over that initial shock (and
covering themselves up), I
suspect that they started to
see other things in an
entirely new light as well,
like the Sun and Moon, and
countless other things in the
world about them. They would have had
mixed feelings of fear and
wonder, leading them to ask questions
and seek answers and
explanations, which would
alleviate, but could never
completely dispelled,
their fears.

Initially, all
explanations were fanciful and
full of the supernatural. It
was the Ancient Greeks, it is
said, who first sought
and found (more-or-less)
rational explanations. They
were the ones who first
determined the true shape and
size of the Earth. One of them
even suggested the Earth was a
wandering star (planet is
Greek for
"wanderer") which spun on its axis and circled
the Sun, along with the other wandering stars, such as Venus,
Mars and Jupiter, but this was too
fantastic an idea, flying in the face of common
sense. Everyone could see with
their own eyes that Earth was
at the centre and that everything
else revolved around it. About
1800
years were to pass before this
"incredible" idea
was again put forward (by
Copernicus in the 16th
Century) and eventually (in
the 17th Century) became generally accepted as
being true. Nowadays we all learn it at school
and and accept it without
question, taking for granted
what up until about 400 years
ago most educated and all
uneducated people would have
considered an incredible and
absurd idea.

Or
what about the idea of plants
having sex?! And flowers
being
their sexual organs?! Where
do the days of the week come
from, and the months of the
year? Why
is a day divided into 24
hours, an hour into 60 minutes
and a minute into 60 seconds?

And
what about the scientific and
technological developments, which
during the past century or so
have completely transformed,
not just our understanding,
but also the very world in
which we live and the way we
live our lives? We enjoy (or
would if only we appreciated
it more) opportunities and
levels of material prosperity,
comfort and security that just
a few generations ago were
beyond peoples wildest dreams
and could not have been bought
for all the tea in China.

The
History of Science is the
ongoing biography of western
civilisation. It is our
autobiography, the story of
how we got to where we are. It
doesn't tell us exactly WHO we
are, but has cleared up many
myths and taken us a long way
towards finding out.